Archive for March 5, 2017

Finally watched all of William Wyler’s THE STOLEN RANCH, which I mentioned a while back.

Wyler’s claim that, during his days churning out B-westerns, he spent sleepless nights trying to think up new ways of showing a man getting on and off a horse, is borne out slightly by this one — particularly when the hero mounts his steed with an impressive sideways leap that almost topples the poor creature ~

The story is pretty childish, dependent on the villains conducting all their covert business in a room adjoining the kitchen where they KNOW the hero works. Everything is overheard, and without the need for a “wire tapp.”

Faced with such generic and fatuous material, and probably a pretty tight schedule, Wyler does pull off a few nice angles, particularly when he makes use of the actors’ dorsal views — it’s something he continued to exploit in later films — CARRIE springs to mind (not the Spacek) where he exploits Olivier’s ability to express strong emotion with his back to the camera. The intense relationship between two men which SHOULD be at the heart of the story is swiftly diverted by the addition of twin romantic interests (and the obligatory, unconvincing misunderstanding), but not before we’ve had this ~